ABSTRACT
The mosque was located in Ayodhya, a small town in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. The Hindu nationalist claim is that the mosque was built on a site where a temple celebrating the birth of Lord Ram had existed before 1528. The politics of Ayodhya cannot be understood if differences between the organizational and ideological factions within Hindu nationalism are ignored. Organizationally speaking, Hindu nationalism has two aspects: electoral and nonelectoral. The violence in Ayodhya was perpetrated by the activists who came from outside to demolish the mosque. The former combine’s geography and culture; the latter, religion and geography. In their conception of Hinduism, however, Hindu nationalists fluctuate between two meanings of Hinduism—Hinduism as a civilization or culture, and Hinduism as a religion. By the late 1980s, there was an organizational and ideological vacuum in Indian politics. Ayodhya and the insurgencies notwithstanding, politics as usual continued in good measure.
